Madrid

From EL PAÍS, December 14, 2024 (auto-translated from English):

Last Monday, during Paul McCartney’s concert in Madrid, I couldn’t stop thinking about some words of John Lennon that I had heard just a week before. These are the words that close the entertaining documentary Beatles ’64, recently released on Disney+. “It was always insisted that The Beatles led something,” said Lennon, already out of the band. “I don’t know. And, in any case, they were only one face. What I didn’t like was the insistence on having led something. Now I see it as if there was a ship that was going to discover the new world. The Beatles were in the lookout post of that ship. Maybe The Rolling Stones were there too. But let’s just say it was The Beatles who were there. We just said, ‘Land in sight!'”

Surrounded by thousands of people at the WiZink, but mostly next to my 12-year-old son, whom I took to see our first and, surely, last McCartney concert, I thought of that land. A place that I wouldn’t be able to describe, but that I think after so long, I could perfectly point my finger and say: “There it is”. Perhaps, for this reason, and after I commented to my son on several occasions in the days before the concert about the importance of the event, when McCartney jumped on stage, I let him go: “There, look, it’s real”. […]

With Paul McCartney standing there, singing with dazzling dignity, at 82 years old and the 20th century behind him, the songs of The Beatles came to life and one thought stood out from the rest: The Beatles’ ship was not sunk. It never was, but perhaps we let it run aground after a few storms. That ship is ours, as the songs of The Beatles are already ours, and it is time to set it back on course. Paul McCartney took it upon himself to remind us of this. That’s why, on the way home, in the car, I wanted to have words to explain to my son things about that land in which I want to live still with the same passion with which I wanted to live since I first heard Bruce Springsteen and, later, The Beatles, but it was late and the emotions of the concert were still very intense. When I put ‘Hey, Jude’ on the player, I felt deep inside that verse written by McCartney: “Take a sad song and make it better”. I went to talk, but my son said, “Dad, turn up the volume.” I listened, I kept quiet and imagined Paul, John, George and Ringo in the lookout position on the hood of my own car.

Life never fails to offer sparkles.

I drove, feeling grateful again to The Beatles and, moreover, hoping that my son and many like him could one day shout for themselves: “Land in sight!”

Fernando Navarro – From EL PAÍS, December 14, 2024

From EL PAÍS, December 9, 2024 (auto-translated from English):

This Monday, December 9, Paul McCartney, 82, celebrates the first of the two concerts he has offered in Madrid since 2016. It will be at the WiZink Center, the scene of the only Spanish dates of their Got Back tour. With an average price of 130 euros, tickets for the 17,000 spectators that the venue houses have been sold out for months. Among them, there is a ticket of 900 euros: a special pass that gives access to the sound check that the musician organizes hours before and a VIP seat, as explained by the music journalist of EL PAÍS Carlos Marcos in the guide with the details of the concerts.

This ticket is called Hot Sound Packages and includes a t-shirt, a tour print, and VIP seating. “But the highlight is the sound check, in the same venue as the recital and a few hours before, which ends up being a concert of about 60 minutes,” says Marcos, with a repertoire “almost totally different from the one that the whole pavilion will later enjoy.”

The soundcheck begins with about five minutes of the group improvising, with McCartney playing guitar instead of bass. “And then he downloads rock and roll classics that marked him, such as Blue Suede Shoes or Matchbox (both by Carl Perkins), songs lost in his solo career, that song that the Beatles lent to the Rolling Stones, I want to Be Your Man, or classics of the American songbook such as Midnight Special, which they recorded from Lead Belly to the Creedence Clearwater Revival. McCartney changes almost the entire program in each city. It is a whim that the British musician indulges in, which is enjoyed by the privileged wealthy,” says the music journalist in his article. A whim, moreover, different from the one that can later be enjoyed in the concert, where 65% of what will be played belongs to the largest catalog in the history of pop, that of The Beatles.

From EL PAÍS, December 9, 2024